Integrating Multiple Perspectives in Social Multicriteria Evaluation of Flood-Mitigation Alternatives: The Case of Malborghetto-Valbruna

Environmental conflicts, research projects and the generation of collective expectations: a case study of a land regeneration project in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Locally based research projects may generate multiple and competing expectations from local actors, particularly when they deal with local issues that are perceived as affecting the local quality of life, such as land regeneration. The sociology of expectations provides an entry point through which the expectations of research projects in the context of an environmental conflict can be investigated. This article analyzes a case study of a project (RECOAL) whose remit was to develop regeneration solutions for coal ash disposal sites in the western Balkans.The sociology of expectations is applied here to explain the linkage between the emergence of political discourses and collective expectations. The analysis suggests that the emergence of collective future orientations of locally based research projects needs to be understood with reference to the specific political positions from which such orientations are expressed. While expectations may shape the political debate, the political debate is also generative of such expectations.

From ‘Flood Defence’ to ‘Flood Risk Management’: Exploring Governance, Responsibility, and Blame

In the UK there has been a gradual transition in both the framing of flooding as a policy issue and the strategies employed to achieve policy objectives. This has involved a widely recognised shift from policies of ‘flood defence’ to ‘flood risk management’ (FRM), entailing both changes in approaches to FRM—such as greater advocacy of soft flood management approaches—and redistributions of responsibility—including more emphasis on the responsibilities of private citizens. In this paper, we utilise interviews with professionals working in flood risk (total participant n = 44) and discussion groups (participant n = 50) with public(s) that live in one of three UK cities which experienced major flooding in 2007 (Sheffield, Oxford, Gloucester) to examine some of the ways in which these policy transitions are being defined, negotiated, and contested. Drawing on governmentality theory, we reexamine contemporary shifts in FRM and open up discussion around the potential for emergent difficulties connected to the contemporary emphasis on relations of responsibility.